


The Fate You've Carved On Me

by lonelywalker



Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 04:11:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Villains never get happy endings, but Nantucket's only gay Nazi is damn well going to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fate You've Carved On Me

In the end, the Landa men have always disappointed their fathers.

The name of Hans' grandfather, an accomplished scholar who had raised himself above his humble beginnings in Italy, had been nothing more than a curse in the house of Hans' great-grandfather, a man who described himself as an artisan, and who Hans would today call a construction worker. Hans' father, who had grown to adulthood with intellectual if not financial stimulation, had faltered at academia and steadied himself with what was viewed, by his parents at least, as an unchallenging position as a history teacher in one of the lesser grammar schools. And Hans himself, who had crawled around between stacks of his grandfather's journals, picking up Italian and English alongside his German almost from birth (although he quickly forgot much of the Italian when he started learning French in school), who had been not just intelligent but _clever_ , who had been nurtured with a love for learning and a decent respect for liberal ideals... He had become a policeman, and thus ensured himself a particularly unique position in the Landa family line, looked down upon by builder and professor alike.

The locals imagine him to be a teacher of some sort these days, and every glance in mirrors or shop windows reminds him of his father. He's grown older than his years since he was first given the uniform, and the uniform had, for the time it fitted him like a second skin, protected anyone from seeing the effects. They had seen the color, the rank, the silver SS flashes on his collar, and barely anything else. He could have been a black man in that uniform, could have been a Jew with sidelocks and prayer shawl, and no one would have seen him. And, oh, how thankful he had been for that over the years.

He'd spent six months being debriefed by the American military after the entire Operation Kino affair, wearing at first his own uniform, battered and bloody as it was by that point, then theirs, albeit absent the rank pins and the medals and the terror he'd become used to inspiring. Putting on civilian clothes, the khaki pants and the oxford shirt and the sweater they'd had either a secretary or a torturer pick out, he'd felt vulnerable at last. He'd looked in the mirror, examining himself in his soft new clothes, his hair too long for the military, his glasses allowing him to see the schoolteacher within. It was the perfect disguise, a few details aside, and one he might have admired in France, were it part of an investigation, were it merely a short-term costume rather than a very real aspect of the entire life to which he had committed himself. He can't be a Nazi in this country, after all. He can't even have people imagining him that way, cocking their heads and narrowing their eyes and thinking that _perhaps_...

Nantucket. America. They had seemed quite the prospect while tearing around French cow country, where propaganda had overtaken culture, and no one even dared talk to him about opera or the theatre lest he was somehow assessing their devotion to _der Führer_ based on their critical appreciation of Wagner.

Lieutenant Raine, quite the celebrity in military circles, had stopped by before they had finally released him into the wild with his itchy sweater and shiny US passport. Raine had almost walked right past him, and for a moment it had felt like an insult rather than a testament to the efficacy of the disguise. Raine had smiled, all teeth, and brushed Hans' hair back from his forehead with a careless thumb, the seam of his glove dragging over ragged scars. Yes, of course there were scars. He had always known there would be. He knows what knives do, had known that Aldo Raine knew as well as he did, and those wounds had threatened to gouge lines into his very skull. Perhaps, though, in bad light, or in time…

Raine had studied him, eyes barely meeting eyes, and then the hand had been pulled back, a grunt that might be approval given in exchange before he turned on his heel and strolled off with the air of a man wondering what might be for lunch.

Left on a dusty path alongside a row of anonymous buildings, Hans had found himself wishing he'd been smacked in the head, knocked off his feet and left scrambling in the dirt. He would have appreciated the consideration.

***

They probably think that Nantucket will be a disappointment to him, that they are continuing his punishment by giving him precisely what he wanted: a pleasant house that could adequately be called a cottage, with a view of the ocean on a clear day. This is not an anonymous metropolis, where he could easily disappear into a mass of immigrant workers, his accent unsurprising, his presence far less than interesting to the locals. Here, they notice. His lack of possessions is conspicuous, even for one of the artists they occasionally meet, hoping for solitude and a fresh start to an inauspicious life. The army has given him papers that will keep him from being arrested, the clothes on his back, an army pension that will be paid to him each month, and a local boy with a rifle.

If only they had let him have his own weapon and be done with it. He had fleetingly thought about trying to convince them that, left alone long enough, he'd eventually take his own life with it and reduce their number of irritations by one. Still, the boy is company, of a sort, and evidence to the affable citizens of Nantucket that he's not the enemy. If anything, they suppose that he must be a poor victim of the fascist regime, now valued and protected by the gallant USA. Perhaps one day the Jews will hunt him down to this determinedly banal village, but for now he'll be neither the villainous Jew Hunter nor the hero whose efforts had helped to end the war in Europe, but merely a political prisoner liberated from Germany, and now assisting the US government. He's hardly a rocket scientist, but he's an intellectual compared to some, most, all of the people surrounding him. It'll do.

He lies on his bed in the morning sun and reads a secondhand edition of Conan Doyle with a dictionary by his side. His English is good, fluent by some standards, fine for official business. But for living here? He'll never erase the accent, and he doubts that he wants to, but he needs to understand and be understood. And the way they speak in Nantucket? God… He'd understood Raine better. One day, perhaps, he'll forget fragments of his native tongue and search for German novels as frantically as he once had for French and English texts in Austria.

"Mr. Landa?" The boy raps his knuckles against the bedroom door, poking his head in before receiving an answer. Either he has been raised in a home severely lacking in privacy, or he has been led to believe that Landa, if left alone for a moment, was likely to bolt. Still, at least he finally has the name right. For a week, it had been "Landau". The army might be happier with that, would have been happier giving him a new name altogether, but pride – and habit – had kept him from it. Besides, who would ever think of looking for him under his real name?

He raises his eyebrows, tempering the desire to treat the boy as he would a subordinate. It's led to them not exchanging much more than simple questions and answers all week.

"I'm making coffee," Private Caleb Cooper says, rifle slung over his shoulder. He honestly couldn't be more non-confrontational if he tried. What _do_ these Americans call basic training? Landa had been tramping around the trenches of Europe with blood on his hands at a similar age. Still, he supposes he can hardly object, given that his own actions are the precise reason why Caleb, who had presumably signed up with all due patriotism, is guarding his kitchen rather than marching on Berlin.

"Would you…?" Caleb asks, finally sensing that an actual question might be required.

"I would," Landa says with all the agreeability he can muster. "Excellent idea, Private."

Caleb smiles, practically blushing with the praise as he backs out, rifle butt scraping against the narrow walls of the hallway. Landa fixes his position in the book with a scrap of paper, idly scratches his forehead, and sits up. He's not supposed to be the military man anymore. His very appearance would belie the idea that he had ever even held a gun. But he's been one, thought like one, since he was barely out of school. He's spent six months without saluting, without anyone snapping to attention and hailing him as _Herr Standartenführer_. No doubt Caleb would view a military discharge as a relief, as permission to return to his normal life of... Whatever a young man does in this part of the world. Study. Fish. Sell old books and try to drum up a tourist industry.

"What did you do before the war?" he asks, leaning against the doorway as Caleb fumbles with mugs and powdered milk. Oh, for the cafés of Paris now.

"Sir?"

"Before the army. You were a student?"

This is, apparently, a hilarious suggestion for an American youth. "No, sir. I was building houses up the bay…" He flings an arm wide in what might be the appropriate direction, the kettle whistling. "Thought the army would be a lot more exciting than this. Um. No offense, sir."

Landa studies his back for a moment. "Of course not," he says, and slips into one of the hard, wooden chairs around the kitchen table.

"What about you, sir?"

Ah, yes, Americans. They can ask back, here, particularly since he's a civilian. Oh, to tell him the truth, just to see that look of incomprehension mingled finally with terror. "I… was an army officer, a long time ago. But lately I've been much more of an academic, as I'm sure you can tell." Not a lie. How strange truths seem in his mouth these days, when he winces at himself every time he speaks more than a few words. How foreign he must be to this boy's ears.

But Caleb smiles, pushes a mug across the table to him, and sits with his own, rifle rattling against the back of the chair. "What was it like?" he asks, almost conspiratorial.

"Like?"

"War. Fighting."

"I didn't say I did any fighting." No. He could have been a dentist. An accountant. A child like Caleb, doomed to guarding some paltry asset in a rural town somewhere, and never seeing combat, much less death. "You're lucky to be here, Private." _Lucky_. It's not a word he believes in, and it probably shows.

"I want to be anywhere but here," the boy says, steam from the coffee making the air shimmer. "I thought I'd be seeing the world. Honestly, sir, you're as exotic as it gets. And you're not even a Nazi. Or a Commie." He meets Landa's eyes. "You're not a Commie, are you sir?"

"Certainly not," Landa says with a hint of a smile. How very ridiculous.

And they drink their coffee.

***

Years ago, when everyone in Germany had suddenly become fascinated by their family histories – and the family histories of everyone else around them – Hans had racked through records and dim memories of his parents and grandparents, almost _daring_ any of his ancestors to have been Jewish, to have had Communist tendencies, to have challenged his own beliefs and ambitions and existence in any way. But there had been no Jewish blood, for three or four generations at least, and even his grandfather the academic had been too wrapped up in his books and formulae to think of overthrowing any governments. Even his family's sojourn to Italy had only been a minor issue when seeking to join the ranks of the SS, which was often more concerned with family trees from the 1700s than the pressing political issues of the day.

And had there been? He would ask himself the question on occasion, driving towards yet another lonely farmhouse to drag out Jews and gypsies from beneath floorboards and behind false walls. If he had had a Jewish mother, a father who waved placards, a retarded brother… Well, it had never been the case. And as for his own deficiencies, they had never been evident in any records of the state. They could never be seen at a glance, or even determined through the interrogation of key witnesses. All of his "witnesses" are dead, and not by his hand. Even if there were one, a single incontrovertible example of youthful indiscretion, how could anything be said without that witness risking his own life? It would be like turning in one's own mother for being a Jew: uselessly self-destructive.

So he had swallowed it down, distracted himself – and, oh, the European war and what had followed had been quite a distraction. Blood and death and the loss of a generation of idealistic young men. And for what? For a humiliating defeat and the economic destruction that had followed. It had been easy to lose himself in grief and fury from a hospital bed, returning to his home town in a torn and bloody uniform to count off the names of his friends and lovers in hurried dispatches from the front: the dead and dying, those lost in action who would never be found, buried still beneath French farmland. And to think that he had once been _eager_ to fight, to resoundingly defeat the foreigners in what he had envisioned as a mostly bloodless battle. He had wanted to practice his French, and particularly his English. Perhaps he could talk about football when they took prisoners, or when they called a truce. He had wondered if they read much Goethe in English schools…

Had he ever been as young, as innocent, as wide-eyed and naïve as Caleb Cooper? On reflection, he'd been even younger.

The National Socialists had been very interested in the concept of family, in creating a nurturing environment for the youth and the future of the German nation, and – of course – in producing more Aryan offspring. Hans had only cultivated an interest in women for the sake of his career, but he'd been exceptionally good at the "creating" part of the plan, which of course dealt almost exclusively with his major talent of finding people: eliminating the cancers from German society, enabling the strong, vital German soul to thrive and develop and flood throughout Europe, or whatever rhetoric Goebbels had dreamed up at any given moment. Even though its leaders had often strayed into what Hans viewed as strictly insane territory, in the 20s the Nazi party had seemed like the order he was desperate to instill in society. The police had given him a uniform, but keeping the peace had been almost impossible when the people were starving, when the cities were filled with people just as angry as he had been, their sons and brothers and husbands lying slaughtered across Europe. The SS had given him a way out of the chaos, a way to excel, to repent for his past failures. All it had taken was the complete elimination of an aspect of himself that had seemed like nothing at the time.

"I don't suppose you read Goethe?" he asks Caleb one day as they go through the contents of the local bookshop for the third time in a week. He can tell in an instant that his young guardian has never even heard the name before. "Mm. I think the American education system is just a little lacking."

Caleb is flipping through comicbooks, stacked up in a grubby pile by the front desk as though daring the local children to even set foot inside. "It's not so bad. Go over to the mainland and you can't go ten feet without tripping over some snotty student from Harvard or someplace."

"I see." Hans smiles into the detective novel he has discovered. Not Holmes, but good enough to practice his English and exercise his brain.

"Had this girl, once," Caleb says, warming to the subject slightly. "She grew up here. Nice and all. Then she goes over there, goes to school, never comes back except to look down on everyone cause we… Well, probably because we haven't read that Gutte guy, right?"

"I would never look down on you, Private," Hans says in all seriousness. "So you are, ah…" He frowns. "I don't suppose Americans say 'carry a flashlight', do they?"

Caleb blinks at him for a moment. "Oh, no. Torch. And no. I mean, you know."

"Oh, certainly."

A moment passes, filled with the sound of pages crinkling under his fingers, and the shop's owner sighing into his newspaper.

Caleb coughs. "Sort of hard to think that way about someone you've known forever, isn't it? It's like every girl here is my sister. Guys come here on vacation, think Nantucket girls are all so swell, and I just think about them playing with dogshit when they were four, y'know." He goes through his comics with more intent. "Hey, Mr. Landa, you might like this."

Good lord. Picture books. "I think they're a little below my reading level, Private."

"Yeah, but people don't really talk like they do in those books of yours. And you always want to know all those… you know, those little phrases?"

"Idioms."

"Right. So here you are."

Hans adjusts his glasses and looks at whatever dire artwork has just been pressed into his hands. On the front page, a young man dressed in a garish Halloween costume resembling the American flag is… is punching Hitler. Well. How… debonair. "Captain America. Very subtle."

"I'm not saying it's great literature or anything. There's German in there too."

From a glance at the depictions of German soldiers, it appears that speakers of the great language of Mann and Hesse say very little other than "Nein!" and "Achtung!" while being resoundingly defeated by the American hero. Hans nods slowly. "Thank you, Caleb, that's very thoughtful."

On the edge of his vision, he can see the young soldier _beam_ at the use of his first name. Stupid, stupid. But it hardly matters now.

"So tell me," he says after they've paid for their reading material, and are about to venture out into the foggy seafront. "Who was this girl you held a torch for, Private?"

***

They go walking in warmer days, the grass still slippery with the previous day's rain even though the sky is blue and bright. Caleb, clumsy in the kitchen, is surefooted and eager among the fields and woodland. The war is beginning to die away in the news, descending once again into fiction, and thoughts of faraway lands Hans had once called home. Caleb has received notice in the mail that he will soon be discharged, free again to work construction, and walk without a gun over his shoulder. In theory, this should mean that Hans is safe, that no one would possibly want to hurt him. In practice, it means that the army is done with him, and no longer cares whether he dies.

He's thinking of buying a gun.

"What did you do in college?" Caleb asks, cheerfully out of breath in the way only young people can be, sure to get it back in ten seconds when he launches himself up another hill. Hans is beginning to be painfully aware that what had been essentially a desk job, and then almost a year of sitting around in the States, has had absolutely no positive effects on his fitness levels.

He pauses and clears his throat, looking back down at the village. They've come far, with Caleb setting the pace. "Something very impractical," he says, and brushes leaves off a boulder, sitting down to re-lace his shoe. "I was mostly interested in language and stories before the war… the first war, that is. The first world war."

"Stories… You should write a book."

Hans glances up at him, into the sunlight. "About what?"

"About… Well, whoever gave you that scar. Fuckin' Nazis. They must've really hated you."

"They hated a lot of people," Hans replies, his hand going to scratch his forehead, the lines of the scars barely detectable by his fingertips, however stark they must look to other people. He had been fortunate that Caleb, along with all of the other inhabitants of the island he had met, had automatically assumed that the swastika had been a way to mark him as an enemy of the Nazis, rather than to identify him as one of them. Aldo Raine hadn't counted on the goodwill – or simple ignorance – of his fellow countrymen. "At least I'm alive."

Caleb edges onto the rock beside him. "You, um. Did you leave anyone there? Family? I mean… you don't wear a ring."

 _I had a wife. Children. The Nazis murdered them._ The lie springs to his mind, fresh and clear as the truth. And why not? It would garner sympathy. It would explain both his current status and his lack of interest in any of America's eligible women. It would make his rather ardent interest in Caleb Cooper seem benign. Fatherly. He could have had a boy Caleb's age by now. Yes, what a wonderful excuse. "No, I… There wasn't anyone."

"Oh."

He could read disgust into that syllable. He could read hope. Or, more likely, boredom. Americans are no harder to understand than the German and French-speakers he has interrogated in the past, but his comprehension of Caleb Cooper is unfortunately masked by a personal connection. He both wants Caleb to want him, and is more or less convinced that such a thing is impossible. Strapping young American manual laborers do not lust after scarred old men. Still, what would the harm be in testing his theory? The loss of a friendship that is barely a friendship, based on nothing more than orders from the US military. The boy could have been selected by Aldo Raine, for all he knows. Caleb. He could be a Jew. He's not as stupid as Hans had first thought. He could be waiting for precisely the right moment to blow Hans' head off, and no one would care.

"Have you ever fired that?" he asks, the thought hardly perturbing him in the least. Somehow, death on Nantucket seems vaguely less prosaic than his life here.

Caleb is popping gum into his mouth, and offers Hans a stick. "In basic training, yeah."

"You seem a little tense."

Caleb shrugs, and Hans moves his hand, slipping it down the crease of Caleb's trousers. He hasn't done this in years, barely remembers how it was before, and has no concept of how two men might do this in situations not framed by either adolescent desire or the terror of imminent death. His heart should be thumping. Instead, it feels as though it's stopped.

"What're you doing?" Caleb asks in a whisper.

Hans doesn't meet his eyes, keeps his gaze on Caleb's crotch, and concentrates on undoing his fly one-handed. "Relax," he says, very much aware that Caleb is hardly likely to do so. It occurs to him, feeling the boy's prick, thumb running over the thick dry warmth of it, that he's mostly used that word to people he'd intended to kill. Perhaps in English it sounds a little less... commanding.

Caleb swallows, shifts, squirms. "Fuck," he says, and Hans chuckles at the sound of resignation rather than anger in his tone, stroking the ridge of his knuckle over the head of Caleb's prick. Circumcised. But then, so many Americans are.

When _did_ you become such an expert on the anatomy of the American penis, Hans? But he bites his tongue, tightens his grasp, and jacks Caleb off with an intent he'd thought he'd lost. It's been years, but he knows now the way he'd known the first time, even though Caleb goes rigid, barely daring to breathe. The boy comes hot and fast over his hand, red-cheeked, eyes wide.

"There," Hans says, and opens his own fly, feeling himself as Caleb goes limp in his hand, staring steadily into Caleb's eyes as he comes. If there's anything there beyond shock and confusion, he's not able to tell.

"There," he repeats, wiping off his hands on a handkerchief, and standing up as though completely ready to continue on their trek as though nothing had happened. "You need to learn to relax more, Private. Particularly if none of the girls..." There's an expression, and it refuses to come to mind. After that, it's a miracle he can find any words at all.

Caleb corrects his clothing and clears his throat. "Is this why...?" He makes a hurried cross over his forehead with a finger.

"They would have killed me," Hans says. "I hope you're a little more forgiving, Private."

Caleb is examining his rifle, although, from the expression on his face, he's doing anything but actually seeing it. "I wouldn't hurt you."

"Perhaps you should."

The return trip is rather less bracing, Caleb snuffling into a handful of tissues, complaining about pollen in the nascent spring air, Hans struggling to keep his foothold on the slippery hillside. The silence, broken only by sneezes and involuntary cries of surprise and rebuke, is oddly comforting after such a venture, such a break in decorum. He's not dead, not even rejected in so many words. And if he isn't quite _happy_ with the memory of Caleb's prick swelling in his hand, with the very real presence of his own come sticky on his skin, there is at least a sense of relief. A dam finally burst.

He showers, washing mud and blades of grass from his hands and hair, sweat and semen from his body. Caleb is standing in the doorway, feet and shoulders braced against the frame, studying his fingernails, glancing at Hans' body with a shy fascination. "They did that to you?"

 _That_ is a pattern of shrapnel wounds decades old, marking his left shoulder, curving into his chest. Hans shakes water from his eyes. "They did, they being the British a very long time ago."

"Oh."

He feels a little like a victim, standing naked with the water beginning to chill. Looking in the eyes of someone who sees him, who sees _him_ , this scarred old man, hardly the pinnacle of physical perfection even without the wounds or the weight of the years… He misses the uniform in that instant, the stiff leather of his boots, the coat that had felt as though it could stop bullets. They'd all looked at him and seen the Reich, seen blond hair and blue eyes though his had tended to grey and green. In the days when he'd not only been uninterested in love, but actively hiding from any hint of affection, it had served him well. And now he's lost without it.

"Worst I've got is I almost cut my finger off last summer doing construction." Caleb props his rifle up against the doorframe, undoing the buttons of his jacket. "My brother almost lost a leg, too."

"You have a brother?"

"Better looking than me," Caleb says, and his jacket is on the floor.

He should ease into the role of the mentor, the experienced older man leading the boy astray, guiding him down well-trod paths. But he had had nothing more than numb hands frantically fumbling at uniforms less well-kept than Caleb Cooper's, fingers pressed to lips, and an unspoken pledge to forget that it had ever happened. He's had little more than fantasies of how it might be.

"Is this all right?" Caleb asks, shirt soaked, his hand a burning warmth on Hans' cheek.

Hans pulls him under.

***

There had been days in his youth when he had been utterly convinced that everyone around him had been able to read his mind, that they could _tell_ precisely what he had been doing on each sun-streaked college afternoon he'd spent with a beautiful boy of his acquaintance. He'd known they could smell it on him, could feel the sticky tingle of sweat and semen he'd soon scrub off with a passion. But no one ever had. No one had ever even looked at him twice, with his conspicuous lack of a wife. If anything, they'd considered him a gentleman. But still, the SS had done him a favor in that arena. Very few women were actually _attracted_ to that uniform, and those that were… Still, Hans could plead dedication to his work, and be admired for it, and all it took was to look away from men like Dieter Hellstrom, to let his mind wander only behind locked doors. And if he thought of the Reich's heroes, limber and muscled, when he jerked off, what of it? And if he thinks of Caleb Cooper now, warming his body between cold sheets in a colder room…?

In public, they might as well be any two men in the world – Caleb's uniform isn't so unusual, and no one looks twice at Hans as long as he keeps his mouth shut. He's grown to quite like the anonymity, and in Caleb's presence he's even more of a shadow as his young protector grins at girls and holds open doors and wins hearts at every turn.

"You should get married," he says while they wait in line at the cinema. "Fun's all very well, but…"

Caleb somehow 'accidentally' nudges the butt of his rifle into Hans' chest, just below the sternum. "I don't need you lecturin' me, too. Can't believe you haven't seen this one."

"Somehow, American war films were in short supply in the Austrian Alps."

"Yeah, well, this one's worth traveling halfway round the world for. I must've seen it five times. More. They only get new films here about once every six months."

He might be joking.

The film is set in Morocco, which Hans suspects is more likely to be a set somewhere in Hollywood, and features a colorful cast of French police, Nazi soldiers, Jewish revolutionaries, and - naturally - a handsome American who outwits them all. Hans watches, and studies, with half an eye on his companion, who seems to be mouthing much of the dialogue.

"So what did you think?"

They walk home along a poorly-lit street made slippery by evening drizzle, and Hans finds himself longing for the protection of his heavy leather SS coat, which he'd insisted on wearing even in the summer days of France.

"I'd wondered what had happened to Conrad Veidt," he says, cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief. "I saw him in a very interesting film…" The years rack up in his mind. "Well, before you were born."

"So you liked it?"

"It was good," Hans admits, with a bit more consideration than he suspects Caleb is really looking for. "The ending was predictable, of course."

" _Predictable_? Mr. Landa, you can't tell me that ninety-nine out of a hundred guys wouldn't just go with the girl and get the hell out of a warzone."

"Ninety-nine out of a hundred men, as you say, are not in a Hollywood film." Hans pauses, considering the proper way to phrase his argument. "I've seen enough propaganda in my time to understand how it goes. How it had to end."

"Propaganda. That was just a movie."

"A movie in which the evil Nazi is shot dead, in which the bonds of marriage are not sullied, in which a formerly carefree American becomes a hero in times of war and vows to fight the fascist scourge. Of course, no, it is perfectly _derogatory_ towards the American viewpoint."

Caleb scuffs the toe of his boot on the gravelly road. "There are heroes in this war, you know. And a lot of Nazis did get killed. And some married couples really do stay faithful."

"Mm, yes, of course. But you admit that, generally, given the choice, a man in that position would indeed take the plane to a life free from the immediate possibility of being shot. Particularly if Ingrid Bergman happened to be onboard."

"Yeah, but _generally_ nothing exciting happens at all. _Generally_ we're stuck on Nantucket with nothing to do but… you know. And watch the rain."

Hans chuckles. "My apologies, Private. I'm not as terribly exotic as you hoped. But in any case, you would be disappointed, would you not, if Herr Bogart took that plane and abandoned that resistance fighter to his fate, and the Nazi Major lived, realistic as it may be?"

"I don't think it's realistic at all," Caleb shrugs. "Okay, heroes don't always win. Sometimes they die trying. But the bad guys do get what's coming to them."

"Always?"

"Yeah… You think even if Hitler won the war there wouldn't be someone ready to kill him eventually? Even one of his own guys? You don't screw around that many people and get a happy ending."

They've reached the path up to the cottage, and Hans stops, waiting for Caleb to find the key. "Perhaps the bad men who find happiness just keep very, very quiet about it."

"Yeah, they'd better," Caleb says, and kisses him.

It's not much of a risk, alone on a dark street where anything observed could be explained away as a trick of the light. But Hans has no concept of how to react to this daring, this blatant foolhardiness by someone who has never been hunted, who has never cowered beneath floorboards or run for his life or lived in fear of some adolescent indiscretion suddenly coming to light.

"Don't do that," he says, voice quieter than it needs to be, and he pushes Caleb away.

He's gone only five or six strides when he hears Caleb following. "My parents want to meet you, you know."

"No they don't."

"They do. They think you've been a really good influence on me, Hans."

The name may be calculated to bring him up short, but he barely misses a beat. " _Hans_ ," he says, one foot on the doorstep.

"Did I say it wrong?" Caleb asks inside, his breath on Hans' neck a mere moment before his lips, fingers wrestling with Hans' fly.

***

He's had good mornings before in his life, beautiful summer days in Austria, and even in France, when he would wear civilian clothes and feel like a human being for a moment or two. He would swim in ice-cold lakes, smoke good German tobacco, and be at peace with the world, if not himself.

In Nantucket, only mornings with Caleb Cooper begin to approach that kind of contentment. Sleeping through the night with anyone seems strange – it had only ever happened in the past with those conquests that it would have been ungentlemanly to shove out the door past midnight – but with a man? Caleb makes up for it with military-short hair scratching at Hans' thighs, hands braced on his hips, his mouth wet and warm and eager.

Hans falls in love on those mornings, if only for an hour or so in that dazed space between dreams and waking, between an earned sleep and the compulsion to dowse himself with the often-freezing water of the shower. He's not used to happiness, but Caleb locks his arms around Hans' legs, and _keeps_ him there, those construction-worker hands tight enough to bruise until he has no more say in whether to relax or not.

Caleb fucks him slowly over pillows until he goes slack, his eyes closed tight.

The day Caleb goes to the mainland, turning in his weapon and his uniform and any responsibility he has towards guarding the life of one Hans Landa, Aldo Raine comes to Nantucket.

Hans opens the door to him, smiling, blinking in the sunlight. "Lieutenant Raine. Have you come to kill me?"

If Hans has become the very picture of domesticity, Aldo Raine has remained much the same. The familiar uniform and the scar around his throat no doubt help. Still, he glances around behind Hans before placing his hands on his hips and looking back out towards the water. "Nice li'l place you got here."

"The American army apparently has taste, much to my surprise."

"Right." Raine somehow draws out the word so that it encompasses four or five syllables. "Well," he says, turning back, and taking the cap from his head. "You going to make me coffee, or do I have to get my own?"

In the kitchen, Hans goes through the procedure Caleb could more or less perform in his sleep, not once looking over his shoulder. He expects that shooting a man in the back might be beneath Raine, but in any case he's hardly going to survive for long with the wrath of the US army against him. "Sugar? I imagine that peacetime is a rather boring time for you, Aldo."

"Peace. Sure. It'll take a lifetime to fix what your people did to Europe. You've seen the pictures – concentration camps, forced labor camps…"

"I heard that your people were thinking of dropping a… what is the term? An _atomic bomb_ on Japan."

"To end the war. Maybe a couple of innocent people died in that cinema too."

Hans passes him a mug, and sits in Caleb's usual chair. "Poor Zoller. Hollywood would have loved him."

Neither of them seems particularly interested in drinking. "Nantucket loves you," Aldo says, stretching out with a sigh. "I asked around when I came over on that damn ferry."

"Checking up on me, Aldo?"

"Yeah, right. You're such a nice man, aren't you, Hans?"

Hans smiles thinly, and lifts the mug to his lips. "You thought they'd have a different opinion of me?"

"Hans Landa, with that accent and a fucking swastika on your forehead, not to mention all your _charming_ mannerisms... Thought you'd be strung up on a fishing hook over the harbor."

"Give it time."

Aldo draws over one of the comicbooks with a finger. Over the past months, it's become rather grubby with coffee mug stains.

"Gotta be honest, Hans. Thought about shooting you right in that smart mouth of yours. You're only one loose end in a helluva big war, but you're my loose end."

"And all of the Nazis have to die in the end, do they? The Americans triumphant."

"After your work at the cinema, the bigshots mostly are."

"And the littleshots?"

Aldo pushes away his mug. "Heard a few people asking if we'd got the Jew Hunter, if you'd died along with Hitler."

Hans raises his eyebrows with an eager smile. "And did I?"

"Hard to tell, the way that place went up."

"Ah." He shifts in his chair. "A rather unsatisfactory ending, I agree. And it's not even about the glory. The basterds killed Hitler, after all. It's… Mm, that niggling sensation that there is a task left unfinished. A cup left unwashed. A Jew who escapes from a cellar… Honestly, though, I always liked that feeling. It made me feel… _useful_."

"Useful." Aldo Raine crosses his legs. Shifts. Recrosses them. "You hunted and killed Jews across Europe to feel useful."

Hans lifts a finger, correcting a point as though he were addressing a humble student. Or Caleb. "Hunted… I killed very few, I must say. And it happens to be a talent of mine. I'm almost certain that were I a… a composer, say, or a sculptor, I would hardly be facing your anger for using my skills in the service of my country."

"And how're you liking the Jews round here?"

"We get along wonderfully." Hans spreads his hands. "I have nothing against the Jews, Aldo. But nothing unites a country - a people - like a common enemy, and the Jews were a convenient target."

"What if they'd chosen some other target?"

A shrug. "Oh, the political dissidents, of course. The mentally defective."

"And you?"

Barely a blink. "I don't quite follow."

"Sure you don't. Talk a dozen languages and _this_ is what you don't quite follow. Fags. Queers."

"Homosexuals? Well, yes, of course. As I said, the mentally defective. Even you Americans agree that it's a despicable psychological condition." The ice cool composure of his SS days has descended on him once more, his eyes steady, his voice measured.

But Aldo Raine is no terrified farmer. "I don't need to kill you," he says after a moment's thought. "You'll do it yourself sooner or later. Prob'ly why you came to this fuckin' island anyway."

"It's really quite a lovely place in the summer."

"Yeah." He pushes back his chair, a harsh squeak against the floor. "Look after yourself, Hans."

Hans smiles brightly. "I assume you mean that with the very _least_ amount of sincerity, Lieutenant."

"Damn straight."

The path to the road, and then on down to the water is streaked with sunlight, and Aldo jams his cap down onto his head, doubtless planning his escape route as Caleb Cooper strolls along the road towards them. He looks so very different, absent his uniform: relaxed and easy and free. Hans had half-expected never to see him again, to have him vanish into the ranks of the US army and the swarms of people in the cities. Of course he had to be one of Aldo's men, to have such a strange, lonely assignment, to pretend to be attracted to the old Nazi. What would be the chances that they would send just any young soldier to guard him, when they know precisely what he's like, and how devious he can be? What are the chances that, after years of self-denial, he'd come to America and fall straight into the lap of a gorgeous boy who just happened to be... _that_ way? Even he's not that good.

And, yes, there it is – a glance of recognition as he passes Aldo on the path, just before he catches Hans' eye and beams, picking up his pace on the last few steps like an eager puppy. And here it is, the pistol against his ribs, no doubt, when there's no one but Aldo Raine to see. Those must have been his orders, to tolerate anything in order to get close, to be able to fling his arms around Hans Landa without any fear of a knife in the belly.

Hans stays where he is. Oh, if there's one thing he regrets it's being so sentimental and unsuspecting a target.

But Caleb has his hands in his pockets, almost blushing before he turns back towards the sun, looking after Raine. "Was that Aldo Raine?" he asks, his quiet voice laced with wonder.

"You know it was." Has his detective's brain truly betrayed him? Had he seen only the disguise, the façade Raine had wanted him to see? Is he still seeing it?

Caleb glances at him, as if hoping for a smile. "Seriously, Hans, you know Aldo Raine?"

In Caleb's mouth, his name still sounds like it might come at the end of one's arms. "We did some work together, once. And how do you know Aldo Raine, Mr. Cooper?"

Aldo turns back when he reaches the road, for a moment almost looks as if he might wave, and then carries on his way towards the docks.

"How do I know Aldo Raine…" Caleb turns to him, fingers mischievously working on undoing the buttons of Hans' shirt, with the attitude of someone who has just been asked who Humphrey Bogart might be. "For a guy who reads as much as you do... C'mon, I'll show you."

He has a new issue of that damned _Captain America_ comicbook stuffed in his back pocket, and Hans follows him inside, wondering if he should perhaps arm himself. If Aldo truly wants him dead… Well, he could have done it himself, of course, but there might be some poetic justice in being killed by his lover, by someone he trusted… Hans stops in the doorway, and takes a breath. If Aldo truly wants him dead, there will be nowhere in the world to hide.

Caleb crouches down by the pile of comicbooks, and picks one out with a fairly generic war title, and rough drawings of heroic Americans gunning down beast-like Germans. Charming. "Here," he says, and thrusts it out.

Hans doesn't take it.

"Well, fine." Caleb gets to his feet and flips through the pages. "Here… _Inglourious Basterds_ , a true tale from occupied France. Now you tell me that isn't the guy who was just here two minutes ago."

Undone by a comicbook. Hans reaches out a hand for it, and examines the page. The art is hardly stellar, but there is Donny Donowitz in his grubby white undershirt, and there is Aldo Raine, mustache and scar and master of pithy one-liners. "I see."

"Some people are saying it's just a story. But the government won't deny it. The basterds ended the war. Killed Hitler. I can't believe you didn't know about this. They blew up a whole cinema full of Nazis right in the center of Paris."

 _Actually, that was me._ "That seems too extraordinary to be true."

"I know, right? But they had this double-agent working in the fuckin' SS, Hans. I mean, the SS! I have no idea how Aldo Raine managed that, but he's Aldo Raine, you know? All of the basterds got the medal of honor."

"Allegedly."

"And this guy…" Caleb grabs the comic back, eagerly turning pages. "This German guy… no, wait, _Austrian_ guy… he got it too. Rumor has it they got him out, and he's in the US somewhere, some little out of the way place where no one would ever find him."

Hans blinks hard, feeling a headache coming on as he eases into the chair by the door. "Mm. And he has a swastika carved into his forehead." Aldo would never, ever let that little detail slide. Bear Jew, exploding film, hijinks in a cellar… no, the swastika was his finest work. "How long have you known?"

"That you're a hero?" Caleb shrugs. "Before they even gave me this assignment. I thought you'd be shouting it from the rooftops, you know. You pretty much won the war, Hans. You blew up Hitler."

"Mm." Hans takes his glasses off, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, suddenly tired beyond belief.

Caleb pulls out a revolver from the belt of his jeans, laying it on the table between them as he sits. "I only found out you were the Jew Hunter today."

"Ah." There's a certain sense of relief at being found out, at finally being discovered. He hasn't even been a particularly good rat, hiding out in full view, using his real name, refusing plastic surgery for the scars, not even trying to drop his native accent… If it were anyone but Caleb, he would have to fight them off out of sheer annoyance at their stupidity. "Aldo told you."

"He came back on the boat with me. Said he'd like to say goodbye before I did… whatever I wanted."

"And what is it that you want?" He should be able to tell, should be able to look into the boy's eyes and _know_. But, for the first time in his life and his lengthy career, there are no answers there.

Caleb has one hand next to the gun, the other reaching for Hans' fingertips. "You want to die."

"If I'd wanted to die, I would have stayed in that cinema."

"No… That's not your style."

Hans smiles, his heart barely in it. "Perhaps not. You've certainly become more articulate since you gave up the uniform, Private."

"Caleb."

"And that is your name?"

"I never lied to you."

"Jewish?"

"Little bit."

"Then you'd better shoot. They'll probably give you a medal."

Caleb raises his eyebrows, his fingers hot against Hans'. At any other time, Hans would shove him _hard_ against the wall, or tackle him to the floor, blood surging through his body, desire prickling under his skin… "It would be a good end to the story, wouldn't it? The bad man thinks he's so safe in his little paradise, but traitors and killers never live happily ever after, so he's betrayed by the person he loves most. They probably won't even find your body for weeks. And they'd never find me."

"Du hättest mir meine Uniform bringen sollen," Hans says with a dry mouth, and it's the first thing he's said in his native tongue in months. "You should have brought me my uniform."

Caleb cocks his head to the side. "Yeah, maybe. Wouldn't that be nice, to find an SS officer dead in Nantucket? Must have been scary as fuck having you show up in that outfit on someone's doorstop. And how many people did you kill?"

"At this point, the precise number seems irrelevant."

"Right. Kill one Jew, you might as well kill ten. Kill ten, might as well kill a hundred."

"Might as well be hanged for a… a sheep instead of a lamb? Is that it?"

"That's pretty much it, Hans, yeah."

Hans curls his fingers into a loose fist, and draws it out of Caleb's reach. "Any man in their right mind would kill me," he says, getting to his feet. "I'm a _Nazi_. An officer, not even some poor kid dragged into the war to guard an old man in his kitchen. There's no moral compunction about that, is there? No troubled thoughts after you leave the cinema. Not even a pretty girl on a plane to tempt you away..."

"Hans…"

"You know how it goes," Hans says. After a moment of thought that is hardly even thought, he goes to draw the curtains against a relentlessly sunny day. "You know how it has to end."

He looks at the boy rather than the gun, and thinks of a kiss on a hillside rather than Aldo Raine, standing over his body with a wide Tennessee grin. He'll die with a swastika on his forehead and hope in his heart.

His father would, he suspects, very much disapprove.


End file.
